"The mind does not regulate its own condition. Mental depression, for example, is a state of mind caused by the body. In a cell in the hole it only seems that there is a separation of mind and body - in fact, the body's condition (of deprivation of sensations; experiences, functions, and so on) controls the moods of the mind more than in any other situation I can think of."

"I feel that if I ever did adjust to prison, I could by that alone never adjust to society."

"But a kind of genius can come of this deprivation of sensation, of experience. It has been mistaken as naïve intelligence, when in fact it is empty intelligence, pure intelligence. The composition of the mind is altered. Its previous cultivation is disintegrated and it has greater access to the brain, the body: it is Supersanity. Learning is turned inside out. You have to start from the top and work your way down. You must study mathematical theory before simple arithmetic; theoretical physics before applied physics; anatomy, you might say, before you can walk."

"The intelligence recedes, no more a tool of learning - because knowledge is based on experience - but a tool of the outside world it is deprived of knowing. It tries to contact other minds by telepathy; it becomes the Ancestor. Words and Numbers come to hold mystic significance: they were invented by some arcane magic older than man. The line between the word and the thing vanishes; the intervals of numbers in infinity collapse with infinity."

"Even European philosophers have taken notice that most of what we take for knowledge is nothing but bias and prejudice."

"The world is amazed at how 'cruel' it is! (This is very funny to think about!) And then, when the 'chips are down' (Sartre's favorite expression), Sartre, who has never gambled but is enamored of the terminology of a kind of daring that doesn't involve getting his ass skinned, 'martyrs' himself. It is the same kind of responsibility anyone takes upon himself by submitting to your bad opinion of him by hanging his head and agreeing with all the accusations - and then, when he has done that, forlornly tells you he is sorry it rained last night, sorry the price of tea went up, etc. etc."

"Most important, you learn never to trust a man, even if he seems honest and sincere. You learn how men deceive themselves and how impossible it is to help them without injuring yourself."

"Never Again the Burning"

"Christians have oppressed Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Pagans, and each other throughout their centuries of power, preaching religious intolerance as the word of Jehovah whenever they had the military, political, or economic power to make it stick — and then piously preaching brotherhood, peace, and toleration when they didn't."

"Rules without relationship leads to rebellion."

"If someone tries to tell you you are the greatest generation in the history of America, don't believe them. You aren't. You have the capability to be, but you aren't."

"The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have... whether you like it or not."

"...I made the statement off and on for 10-11 years that the abundance of knowledge, the abundance of information, will not lead to certainty; it will lead to pervasive skepticism. And, folks, that's exactly what has happened. It's like this. How do you really know, there is so much out there... This abundance has led to skepticism. And then the Internet has leveled the playing field."

"A single experience of this awful convulsion of the elements suffices to fasten the memory of its occurrence upon the mind with such a dreadful force that no effort can efface the remembrance of it. The destructive violence of this storm exceeds in its power, fierceness, and grandeur all other phenomena of the atmosphere."

"The poem, even a short time after being written, seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems something beyond the capacity of the gods."

"You can't make poetry simply by avoiding clichés."

"There's a point where plainness is no longer a virtue, when it becomes excessively bald, wrenched."

"You must believe: a poem is a holy thing — a good poem, that is."

"Yet for this we travelled With hope, and not alone, In the country of ourselves, In a country of bright stone."

"Like witches they flew along rows, Keeping creation at ease; With a tendril for needle They sewed up the air with a stem; They teased out the seed that the cold kept asleep, — All the coils, loops and whorls. They trellised the sun; they plotted for more than themselves."

"The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy."

"Over the gulfs of dream Flew a tremendous bird Further and further away Into a moonless black, Deep in the brain, far back."

"I study the lives on a leaf: the little Sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions."

"At Woodlawn I Heard the dead cry: I was lulled by the slamming of iron, A slow drip over stones, Toads brooding wells."

"I shook the softening chalk of my bones, Saying, Snail, snail, glister me forward, Bird, soft-sigh me home, Worm, be with me. This is my hard time."

"Voice, come out of the silence. Say something. Appear in the form of a spider Or a moth beating the curtain. Tell me: Which is the way I take; Out of what door` do I go, Where and to whom? Dark hollows said, lee to the wind, The moon said, back of an eel, The salt said, look by the sea, Your tears are not enough praise, You will find no comfort here, In the kingdom of bang and blab."

"Who stunned the dirt into noise? Ask the mole, he knows. I feel the slime of a wet nest. Beware Mother Mildew. Nibble again, fish nerves."

"Goodbye, goodbye, old stones, the time-order is going, I have married my hands to perpetual agitation, I run, I run to the whistle of money."

"The mind moved, not alone, Through the clear air, in the silence."

"A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait."

"I saw the separateness of all things! My heart lifted up with the great grasses; The weeds believed me, and the nesting birds."

"The wind sharpened itself on a rock; A voice sang:"

"Mother of quartz, your words writhe into my ear. Renew the light, lewd whisper."

"The wasp waits. The edge cannot eat the center. The grape listens. The path tells little to the serpent. An eye comes out of the wave. The journey from flesh is longest. A rose sways least. The redeemer comes a dark way."

"Death was not. I lived in a simple drowse: Hands and hair moved through a dream of wakening blossoms. Rain sweetened the cave and the dove still called; The flowers leaned on themselves, the flowers in hollows; And love, love sang toward."

"To stare into the after-light, the glitter left on the lake's surface, When the sun has fallen behind a wooded island; To follow the drips sliding from a lifted oar Held up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward; To know that light falls and fills, often without our knowing."

"I'll seek my own meekness. What grace I have is enough. The lost have their own pace. The stalks ask something else. What the grave says, The nest denies."

"Bless me and the maze I'm in! Hello, thingy spirit."

"Beginnings start without shade, Thinner than minnows. The live grass whirls with the sun, Feet run over the simple stones, There's time enough. Behold, in the lout's eye, love."

"I take this cadence from a man named Yeats: I take it and I give it back again: For other tunes and other wanton beats Have tossed my heart and fiddled through my brain. Yes, I was dancing mad, and how That came to be the bears and Yeats would know."

"Dante attained the purgatorial hill, Trembled at hidden virtue without flaw, Shook with a mighty power beyond his will, — Did Beatrice deny what Dante saw? All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure."

"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go."

"Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow."

"Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me; so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go."

"This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go."

"I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain!"

"Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I'm martyr to a motion not my own; What's freedom for? To know eternity. I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways.)"

"Is pain a promise? I was schooled in pain, And found out what I could of all desire; I weep for what I'm like when I'm alone In the deep center of the voice and fire.I know the motion of the deepest stone. Each one's himself, yet each one's everyone."

"The night wind rises. Does my father live? Dark hangs upon the waters of the soul. My flesh is breathing slower than a wall. Love alters all. Unblood my instinct, love."